City of Brooklyn Park: Less garbage, more business and job growth

It's another agenda, pretty much another week of not taking our need to jump - fast - into preparing our city to be ready for an economic recovery.

Looking over todays Brooklyn Park city council agenda we do have one good business growth item - a new Hardee's is coming to town.  You will recall that we used to have a Hardee's at Brooklyn Blvd and West Broadway where the current Arby's is now.  This building was constructed years ago as a Hardee's but closed when tne entire Hardee's chain fell on bad times.  For a while it was Fazoli's (I kind of miss this place) and then became an Arby's.

Fast-forward to 2011 and Hardee's is a stronger chain with different management, now owned by the same folks who own Carl's Jr. (mostly SW United States).  They'll be replacing the abandoned BP (Amoco) station on 85th and Xylon, across from the Fleet Farm gas station.  While in and out traffic could be an issue, it's a good use of the property.  It also will bring several jobs for our youth, something our city is desperate for.

So this is good.  We need all the jobs we can get for our community, whether entry level or higher paying.  At the same time, we need to start seeing things on our city council agendaa about business growth, how to change city regulations, fees and attitudes in order to incent new or existing businesses with family-supporting wages to build, move or expand here.

I've been talking about this since last year, I've spoken to some in our leadership about this (many times, in some cases), and we're still not seeing any progress, or even the sense that they're taking this major issue seriously.

We have empty fields, empty buildings, and one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state.  The way to help solve these issues is for our city council to begin to take this issue as seriously as they treated the manufacturered garbage hauling issue.  Business growth and jobs is a REAL issue and touches every resident of our city, young and old.

Ask your city council members and mayor what their plan is for job growth and business expansion.  If they respond and you've heard it before, or it's the typical "our staff is studying it" non-sense, tell them it's time to do something different because what they're doing has not worked.

Brooklyn Park can be the leader in business growth and jobs but only if they start preparing for it.  Now.  Today.  Tonight's agenda.  We can be the next "Sioux Falls of the Twin Cities" if we just decide to do so.  And when we do, as the economy starts to recover - and it will - we will be ready, primed, to bring in those new businesses, to locate new business expansions, or to help our current businesses to grow.

But it takes immediate action and we can't wait much longer.  Why do our city leaders refuse to take this issue seriously?